


New Ceremony

by pulpofiction (pifflapodus_scriptor)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Questing, Spirit World, mako's issues, questing!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:08:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pifflapodus_scriptor/pseuds/pulpofiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is wrong with Mako. Korra goes with him into the Spirit World to set it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Ceremony

**Author's Note:**

> i fucking love mako

The light from the portal throws their shadows against the snow. Overhead, the polar sky is an unbroken black, all the stars hidden by the brightness of the portal, and the forest around them is silent. The only thing Korra hears is the portal itself. Energy slides in white, glistening ripples over the sphere with a faint, toneless whispering, like a voice humming to itself from somewhere out of sight. Her boots crunch the snow underfoot and her skin crawls under her clothes, her hands curling into fists of their own volition. Korra looks at Mako and his face is gaunt, tight with unease. Behind them Naga tugs on her leash with a keen whine.

But Korra said she’d help, so back into the Spirit World she’ll go - and she’ll stay as long as it takes, do whatever he needs her to do -

“Korra, wait,” Mako says, grabbing her shoulder as he comes to a halt, and Korra turns around, frowning.

“What’s the matter? Changed your mind?”

“I can do this by myself,” Mako says, the light ghosting softly across his face, and her frown deepens. Korra remembers the way he looked at her the first time they met: a narrow, sideways glance, impassive and unimpressed as he walked past her offered hand. Like he had, within a fraction of a second, decided she was simply not worth his time.

He keeps looking at her like that.

“You can try,” she says. “But you can’t stop me from going in with you.”

Mako accepts this with an irritated snort, jerking his head away to stare into the portal, throwing his profile into sharp relief. The lines of his nose and his jaw are as strong as always, but the hollows under his eyes are new. And Mako can’t hide it from her, no matter how much he tries - something is slowly rotting inside him.

He can be angry with her if he wants. She still won’t let him go alone.

***

Mako used to have a book, one book, a slim, dog-eared tome of children’s stories bound in green fabric. He stole it from a bookseller’s stall at the street market when he was nine and a half. Just took it straight off the table, stuck it in his jacket, and left, vanishing into the crowd with practiced invisibility. Later that night he read them to Bolin - _yeah, Bo, of course I paid for it_ \- by the light of a fire he built in a cracked ceramic pot, both of them safely tucked away in a den rigged from old crates and clothing in the alley behind the tailor’s place.

Even at nine he thought they were kind of boring: sentimental tales of cheerful, noble children who lived on farms, left home to journey with winged monkeys and air bison, and found gold wishing rings or magic fans that blew dragons away on storms. Mako looked up from the book and looked around, at the tattered blanket overhead, sagging between their makeshift cardboard walls; Bolin curled up and sleeping with his head on his shoes (it’s always the shoes that get stolen first), the dirt under their fingernails and lining their palms.

And then he closed the book and put it down. There’s no such thing as gold wishing rings.

But Mako kept the book until he lost it somewhere between the triads and probending, because while the pages ripped and tore with age, the stories inside never changed. Mako could open to any page he wanted and know what happened next would be exactly the way he remembered it: the boy comes back to the farm, the dark spirit defeated, his pockets full of precious stones.

His bad dreams are like that. There’s the night his parents died, of course; he knows it word for word. Certain days from the street, distinct in their nastiness. Certain people, too, for the same reasons. Each bad dream is just another chapter in the same old book. By now, at nineteen, they’re just a slightly uncomfortable habit.

(Sometimes, it’s more so for the people who sleep with him. _Do you have a lot of bad dreams,_ Korra had asked once, and Mako reassured her: _yeah. It’s no big deal._ She pulled him closer anyway, one hand in his hair and his head on her chest, as though the force of her heartbeat alone could drum out all the bad things.)

So when his dreams change - several nights after they all come back from the South Pole - Mako starts to worry.

They all start the way they always do: with the alleyway, awash in the light of a summer dusk, moments after his mother ties his shoe. Or with the spider-rats on the wall, dozens of arachnid legs scrabbling across the bricks as they catch the scent of freshly stolen food. With Lightning Bolt Zolt’s laughter on the night Mako tries, for the first time, to leave the Triple Threats.

But now they all finish with the silhouette of a man standing in an open door. For a second, the man is framed in white light, flooding through the doorway, like a last, final glimpse; and then the door slams shut. BANG. A metallic thunderclap so powerful that when Mako wakes up on the first night, it is the only thing left of the dream, reverberating through his chest.

Mako rolls out of bed and stumbles sleepily into the bathroom at three in the morning. He scowls into the mirror, hands braced on the sink, trying to gather back the fading images - what had he even dreamed about? The usual, except for the end… He knows the room, it’s familiar; but he can’t place it. Mako sighs as the bare bulb overhead flickers, casting its stark yellow light onto the floor tiles, and runs water onto his face before going back to bed. But he doesn’t sleep. A sick feeling, a squirming in his stomach, keeps him awake the rest of the night.

The second night is the same. He is in the room, watching the man leave, and the door closes again. This time the door lingers before him, solid and immovable, filling his vision with its burnished coppery color. There is no sound in the dream, other than the echo, and the air is still. Fear steals into him, as subtle as a breath of smoke. What if it never opens again - ?

He wakes up with a start. Mako staggers from bed to wash his face, flicking water out of his hair, splashing the mirror with droplets that slide slowly down the glass and onto the wooden frame. It shouldn’t be this unsettling to have the same dream twice in a row. Maybe it’s just one of those dreams everyone has, like flying or being chased or your teeth falling out. Doors slamming shut. Whatever.

When he turns to leave the bathroom something in his side twinges, a small spasm of pain. Mako stops, one hand on the light cord, and lifts up his shirt.

There is a purple-black mark, the size of a two-yuan coin, just over his right hip. It’s darker than a bruise and hurts in a different way - he traces it with his fingertips and it’s warm to the touch, like a fever set in right there and nowhere else - and it’s weird, because he doesn’t remember getting hurt there at all.

Whatever it is, he’s had worse, and with a shrug to the mirror Mako goes back to bed -

\- and wakes up again on the third night, and the fourth, and the fifth - the man disappears as the door closes and Mako plunges into a deep silence, a space as distant and still as the bottom of the sea. And, seizing him like a fist, the same fear… the door will never open again…

“Don’t close it!” he gasps, the moment the door closes on the sixth night. On the other side of the room Bolin murmurs, “Whazzat, bro?”

“Go back to sleep,” Mako mutters, throwing the sheets aside as he sits up. Out on the fire escape he lights a cigarette and lets most of it burn between his fingers, a lazy thread of smoke curling from the tip, rising into the hollow black night. The street below is quiet and he rests against the railing as he takes a deep pull of smoke, feeling his muscles loosen.

“Hey, you alright?” Bolin says, leaning head and shoulders out the kitchen window. Mako glances at him.

“Yeah,” Mako says, after a short pause. Bolin makes a face.

“Well, you’ve been in a really bad mood lately,” he says, “like, worse than normal. You’ve said three things to me all week, bro.”

Mako opens his mouth to argue but rolls his eyes with a huff instead. Bolin’s not wrong. A lack of good sleep makes his short temper even shorter, it always has; and when that happens Mako keeps his mouth shut. And right now, he’s exhausted. He can feel it weighing down all over his body.

“… yeah,” he admits. Bolin settles his arms on the windowsill, casting his gaze over his brother, the cigarette dangling between Mako’s fingers, the empty street.

“Look, I know you and Korra fell through - ” he starts, and Mako snorts.

“That’s not it,” Mako says swiftly, and he stubs the cigarette out on the railing with a crunchy hiss of ashes, dropping it into the empty flowerpot by his foot.

“You and Asami…?” Bolin says, in a tentative voice, and Mako fixes him with a look as he taps another cigarette out of the carton. He doesn’t want to think about either of them right now, and with a scowl he brings the cigarette to his lips and lights it with a snap of his fingers.

“Is it just me, or is it getting way too hard to talk to you?” Bolin says. And Mako concedes with a short sigh, leaning against the railing. For a moment, he watches the bright orange glow crawl up the cigarette.

“I… can’t stop…”

Mako pauses, hand halfway to his mouth, flakes of ash falling away.

“You can’t stop what?”

Maybe, Mako thinks, he’s just going crazy. But he’s seen crazy, heard it from the yellow mouths of insane old men; the hoary tumbleweeds that stagger down the streets, scattering nonsense thoughts as they go. This doesn’t feel crazy. It doesn’t feel right to say that. Crazy isn’t this… precise.

“You know, Mako? Korra was right, you really do need to learn how t - ”

“You talked to Korra? When?” Mako says, turning his head sharply towards Bolin.

“A few days ago. We had lunch before she went to the North Pole,” Bolin says.

“Really? How - how’s she doing?” Mako asks. The heaviness in his chest turns over like a stone.

He hasn’t heard her voice in two weeks. He has only seen her in the morning newspapers, the photographs washing all the color from her eyes. _Avatar Korra used her power to restore the memorial statue of the late Avatar Aang in Yue Bay._ Even with a single banal sentence Mako can see the whole thing: Korra atop a spiraling tower of blue ocean water, her eyes shining with cosmic brilliance, her muscled arms gathering strength with the ease of gathering flowers - and a toppled statue, two hundred tons of stone, rights itself with a shudder as she smiles.

Korra’s thunderous power, breaking free from the dry idioms of journalists. Even a poet couldn’t nail down a storm like her.

“Ask her yourself,” Bolin says.

Mako scowls again. He takes a long drag on the cigarette, feels it spill through his lungs, and blows it out, a silky tendril of smoke that fades without a sound. Korra turns down a long blue hallway, her back to him, her hand still warm on his face, and disappears into the shadows of his mind.

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” he says.

The silence widens as Bolin studies him.

Then Bolin rolls his eyes, withdraws through the kitchen window, and disappears.

Mako waits a few seconds and then pulls up his shirt, his nerves twisting. The dumb bruise thing grew. Now it’s the size of his palm, and Mako swallows as the sick feeling rises to his throat. The desire to call Bolin back vanishes. It’s better if Bolin doesn’t know. He shouldn’t worry.

Mako smokes through a third cigarette and decides to try for a few more hours of sleep - but not before he opens every door in the apartment, all the cupboards and the closets, the doors to the bedroom and the bathroom. Mako leaves them all wide open except for the front door, which he just unlocks, and by the time he falls onto the couch, the mountains in the east are coming back to sight under a crisp dawn sky.

***

The door to Bei Fong’s office is closed.

Mako stares at the door from his desk, waiting for it to open with his arms crossed, tapping out an arrhythmic tattoo with his foot. He’s three hours late. He’s three hours late because he didn’t hear the alarm, even though it sounds like a howler parrot screwing a Satomobile horn ( _which is why he bought it_ ) and of course Bolin made more noodles than he could eat (unbelievable. Bolin knows better than to waste food) so Mako had to choke down half a pot of cold, sticky noodles and then wash it before sprinting to catch the next trolley as though there were a real difference between three hours late and three hours, four minutes late.

Bei Fong’s door, with the stained wood panels and the frosted glass window, looks nothing like the door Mako dreams about. As a foreboding presence, it’s useless without the woman whose name is inscribed on the glass in brass characters. But the door was closed when he got to work and that alone unnerves him. All the windows are open, calling in breezes from the sea, but the office feels stuffy anyway.

Finally it swings open. President Raiko walks out and Mako jumps to his feet, wincing as the fabric of his shirt rubs abruptly against the bruise. His jaw clenches and he forces blankness onto his face.

"Detective," Raiko says, nodding at Mako; and Mako just barely manages to return the gesture.

"Sir," he says, his eyes locked on a fixed point above Raiko’s head. The memory of their last conversation still tastes bitter and as Raiko leaves Mako reminds himself, again, that he did the right thing.

Bei Fong strides over to his desk, coming to a stop squarely in front of him with one hand on her hip and a folder in the other. Immediately Mako bows, flinching again at the bruise’s rawness, and begins in a level voice: “Chief Bei Fong, I’m sorry for being so late. I don’t have an excuse, but I promise it won’t happen again - “

"What are you doing here, Detective? Your brother called you in sick," Bei Fong says, and Mako starts.

"Wait, what?"

"Just as I said. He called around seven-thirty and said you couldn’t come to work," Bei Fong says. She lifts an eyebrow as Mako opens his mouth, with an abrupt spike of annoyance towards his brother. Bolin turned the alarm off.

"Well, he shouldn’t have," Mako says, “‘cause I’m fine.”

Bei Fong’s eyebrow stays arched, her lips pursed in thought, and Mako’s collar is uncomfortably hot against his neck. He can feel the rest of the officers watching them; quick, curious glances from every direction, and clasps his hands behind his back.

“Alright, get back to work. You’ll just have to shadow Detective Thuy tomorrow. In the meantime, I want you to study her case files on the Seven Sages homicide.”

She smacks the folder squarely into his chest with a thick thwap and leaves. Mako takes his seat, his mood souring. He’d been looking forward to shadowing Detective Thuy all week long on the Seven Sages murder, but now he’s stuck in the office, sweltering in the muggy heat, chained to his desk by a case file for the rest of the day. Idly he puts his hand to his waist, feeling for the bruise; it’s starting to ache. Mako settles in to read and tries to concentrate.

But he can’t. Mako keeps going back to Bolin. Why can’t they just respect his job, especially the part where he wants to do his job, and it’s frustrating to have something steady and real going on at last but it’s messed up every step of the way -

He pushes it out of his mind. Mako writes “no weapon found” on his notepad, stares at the words, and underlines it twice. The body was discovered in the Seven Sages public park just after five A.M. by a woman practicing waterbending. Mako flips through the folder, looking for photographs of the park, and winces as the bruise throbs anew.

Mako stands up to retrieve the photographs from Detective Thuy’s desk - he stiffens and claps his hand to the bruise, trying to hold back the burst of pain - focuses on the photographs, in a neat stack on Thuy’s desk, right there - the pain sharpens with a ferocious clarity, broken glass in a firecracker. He screws his eyes shut against the pain and the dark room looms around him - it just won’t go away and the door just _won’t_ -

 

Mako’s eyes open. Officer Lang and Bei Fong are kneeling over him, wearing looks of concern, and with a groan he props himself up on his elbow.

“Oh good, you’re waking up,” Bei Fong says. “How old are you? What’s the date?”

“Huh?” he says stupidly, his senses returning in fits and starts. Floor. Bruise hurts. Ouch. Why is he on the floor?

“You passed out in the middle of the office,” Officer Lang says. She offers him a glass of water and Mako drinks it all in one go, more confused than he’s ever been.

“Nineteen. Year of the Horse, fourth day of the eighth month,” he says, and Bei Fong sighs in exasperation.

“Why do you always have to make a scene, kid,” she says, slipping her hand under his arm and hauling him to his feet. “Bolin was right on the money. I’ve seen dead bodies with more color in their faces than yours. I’m sending you to a healer.”

Mako, numb with shock, can only nod in blank agreement. The pain rolled through him like a wave, cresting and then breaking, and there’s not much of it left. He already feels it receding. But what on earth…?

“Take him to Air Temple Island and make sure he doesn’t drop dead on the way there,” Bei Fong says. She still has him by the arm. When she pushes him towards Officer Lang, he goes easily.

***

Officer Lang takes him as far as the docks on Air Temple Island. On the far end of the dock stands a tall figure in blue clothes, her silver hair pulled into an elegant bun. She has a small satchel slung on her shoulder and welcomes Mako with a graceful smile that strips years off her faintly aging face.

"Lin called ahead," Kya says, guiding him off the dock and onto the ivory-white sand. "Oh, you were at Harmonic Convergence! You’re Korra’s…?"

"Friend," Mako grunts, much more alert now than he was in the office. The sea air refreshed him somewhat. He kicks up little sprays of sand with his boots as he walks, looking back over his shoulder at the stone stairway. Kya follows his gaze and shakes her head.

"You’re not climbing those stairs. Lin said you collapsed," she says. Mako huffs and stares out over the waters, the pastel-blue shallows sloping into the sea, and to the city on the other side. His apartment is only ten minutes from the ferry’s south-side stop. All he wants to do is pass out on his bed with the windows open, an ice pack, and the afternoon music hour. He should’ve just taken the sick day.

"Yeah. Look, can I just go home and sleep this off?" he says.

"She also said you’re a good kid with the personality of an angry donkey," Kya says, with a mischievous grin. "Sit, please."

She motions to a boulder shaded by the cliffside, under a small, scrubby tree clinging to the rocks. The sand around it is cool and soft, dappled with drops of sunlight, and Mako sits with a resigned thump. Jinora is on the far side of the shore, her trousers cuffed to her knees, drawing things in the sand with her staff. She looks up and waves, swinging the staff across her shoulder and loping up the beach.

"Alright! So, what’s going on? You’re a detective, let’s figure this out," Kya says, clapping her hands once in anticipation.

"I think I’m just working too hard," Mako says, "I just got promoted and I’m supposed to be shadowing some senior detectives - "

"What kind of detective starts with an answer instead of a clue?" Kya says, cuffing him on the back of the head, not hard enough to hurt. But it’s enough to make her point.

He fumbles mindlessly for his scarf, dropping his hand when he remembers the scarf is at home.

"I’m having trouble sleeping," Mako says, "and I…"

And even though he’s sitting on a beach on a golden afternoon, watching the waves hissing as they roll up the sand, the island breathing with the safe, relaxed calm of a cat sleeping on a stoop, Mako shivers - the feeling of the closed door grips him again in a cold, colorless vice. The door is right in front of him, so close he can touch it…

But he’s awake, and not dreaming, and it’s just a dream, so Mako shudders it off. Kya is looking at him curiously, her head tilted.

"I also have this strange bruise, I don’t know how I got it. But it started to hurt real bad and that’s why I passed out," he adds.

"I can heal a bruise, no problem," Kya says, just as Jinora reaches their spot in the shade. Her bare calves are freckled with sand, her wrist glistening with a bracelet of braided seaweed, and she beams at them.

"Hi, Mako," she says, "Did you catch any bad guys today?"

"No, ‘cause I caught them all yesterday," Mako says, with a grin that comes out of nowhere. Maybe it came with Jinora. She smiles and shoves her hand into her pocket, fishing out half a dozen wet shells.

"Korra’s in the North Pole. Look at these, I found them," she says, tipping them into his hand, and Mako spreads them clicking across his palm with his finger. He knows Korra is in the North Pole, because he read in the papers that she’s helping her dad and the Water Tribes ‘transition,’ and the idea of Korra trying to politick stodgy old men into cooperating makes him laugh. Giant polar bear dogs make bad diplomats.

"Yeah, I know. The blue one’s swell," Mako says. Jinora plucks every shell from his hand except for the blue conch. He pockets the shell because gifts from kids are like blessings, careless little charms of good faith, and he never turns them down.

"So then what are you doing here?" Jinora says.

"I’m going to take a look at his bruise," Kya says, "and if he says it’s alright, you can stay."

Jinora turns to Mako, beseeching him with her clasped hands, and at his quick nod she squeals with excitement.

"Give me a second," he says, and shrugs out of his jacket, pulls his shirt over his head. The bruise still hurts, a sharp pain lodged in his muscles, and with a jolt Mako realizes it’s even bigger. It looks like someone smeared ink from his hip to navel, a black blot that fades smoothly into a cloudy purple, darkness flooding across his midriff. It has none of the mottled coloring or tenderness of a normal bruise, and when Mako lifts his arm to show them there’s an odd sensation of the bruise clenching - clinging onto him, refusing to be ripped off.

"Whoa," Jinora says, bending over to study it, "that’s bizarre."

"I don’t even know where it came from. But it’s getting bigger," Mako says.

Jinora’s fingers waver towards the bruise, torn between fascination and horror; she tries to poke it but Mako quickly grabs her wrist.

"What do you think it is?" Mako asks, and Kya moves Jinora out of the way to lean in. She scrutinizes his midriff with her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed together; and Mako feels a blush sweep across his face. People rarely inspect him like this, and usually under really different circumstances.

Kya bites her lip and releases it, almost at a loss for words.

Then, in a low voice, she says, “I don’t see anything.”

"I’m not crazy," Mako says, bristling. Is she playing some kind of game with him? But Kya shushes him, resting her hand on his back, and despite his indignant shrug her hand stays.

"No one says you are," she says, in a soothing tone. "Jinora - you can see it?"

"Aunt Kya, it’s right there," Jinora says. She traces the bruise with her finger hovering half an inch over Mako’s skin, a perfect outline.

Kya looks from Jinora to Mako and back again, deep in thought, and she’s quiet. Mako can hear his heart beating, a steady thump-thump in his chest as he waits for her to speak. Bei Fong wouldn’t have sent him if she didn’t think Kya could figure this out.

She opens her satchel and pulls out a small glass flask full of water. She uncorks it and bends out a thin silvery thread, reverent in her movements, and it shimmers in the air with a strange internal light.

With a sudden motion Kya splashes the water onto Mako’s midriff and he startles. It’s freezing cold, much colder than he expected it to be, and Kya hushes him again.

"Relax. It’s water from the Spirit Oasis up north… and if I’m right… " she says. She curves her splayed fingers through the air, coaxing a dazzling blue light out of the water - for a moment all the sunlight pales in comparison, shadows vanishing in the blinding resplendence - and it disappears. The cliffs and the beach and the harbor settle around them as though the world were falling back into place.

Kya bends the water back into the flask and corks it, the stopper squeaking against the glass. Whatever the water took from the bruise can’t be let out. But the bruise itself is unchanged. Mako’s blood slows in his veins, his mind flattening, the way it always does when he’s bracing himself - Kya’s face is dark with alarm.

"Well? What is it?" Jinora says, and Mako silently thanks her for her bravery.

"That thing - I can see it now, but it’s not… normal,” Kya announces, looking down at the water in the flask. Her fist clenches around the neck. “It’s from the Spirit World.”

***

The library on Air Temple Island is cool and musty with the smell of scrolls and old books, their embossed spines glinting in the bookcases. Mako slouches in an armchair and does nothing but wait as Tenzin and Kya pull book after book off the shelves, everything they can find about the Spirit World, discarding one yellowed tome after another. They haven’t found anything in the several hours they’ve been searching, not a single line about injuries spirits inflict on humans - their only working theory.

Jinora slips into the library, holding steaming cups of tea on a tray. She offers the first to Tenzin, checking the tags on scrolls, little slips of paper on strings that flutter like white leaves as a breeze flows in through the windows. Kya, sitting cross-legged on the carpet inside a ring of book stacks, takes the second cup, drinking half of it without moving her eyes from the open book in her lap. And Jinora gives the third to Mako, who glares at the dregs at the bottom of the cup and wonders how much longer he’s going to have to sit here doing nothing.

“Want anything else?” Jinora says, setting the tray on a side table.

“Change for the evening ferry,” he says, and Kya chuckles to herself. Tenzin gives her a curious look and she grins.

“He’s been trying to bolt since he got here. But Lin would kill me if I let one of her boys go back to work without a healing clearance,” she says, and at that Mako sinks further into the armchair, barely suppressing a groan.

“It doesn’t even hurt that bad anymore,” he mutters, which is only half true. The pain in his side has dulled to a persistent ache.

“But it still hurts, doesn’t it,” Kya says, “so just get some rest, drink some tea, scowl some more. I promise you’ll feel better.”

Mako drinks his tea and scowls. She smirks and picks up another book. Most of them are so old they’re written in scripts he can’t read, characters with long curls and curving tails that fell out of use long before any of them were born, and they flow like little black rivers across the parchment. Through the windows the summer sky is slowly cooling to dusk.

Tenzin unrolls a scroll that drops to the floor. It rolls another two feet, the edges of it jagged with missing chops of paper, and he hums in disapproval as he reads - another miss.

And not a single hit. They haven’t found anything.

The nervous feeling in Mako’s stomach pulls tighter.

Jinora taps Mako on the shoulder.

“You look bored. Want me to get you something to read?” she says, clasping her hands and rocking forward eagerly on her toes.

“…Sure, why not,” he says, sitting up, clunking his tea cup onto the side table. “Get me something good.”

Jinora weaves around the library, cradling a growing stack of books in her arm, reaching on tiptoe to grab the higher ones and giving each one a long, thoughtful look. More than once she chooses a book, glances at Mako, and slides it back into the gap on the shelf. That makes him smile a little bit.

She comes back, toting a tower of books up to her nose, and Mako takes them one by one as she explains.

“Historical epic about the Fire Nation. It has _dragons_. Avatar Kyoshi’s biography. Philosophy of lightning-bending. Romance about a warrior queen and her general, and it’s - ”

“No thanks,” Mako says, giving the cover a disparaging look. Jinora rolls her eyes, dramatic and long-suffering as only a ten-year-old girl can be.

“ - my favorite,” she finishes, and dumps the rest of the stack into his lap with a toss of her hands. She wheels around with a flounce of air and Mako, face flaming, hopes the armchair does him a favor and swallows him whole. Now he definitely has to read it, and he’s going to like it. Maybe even _enjoy_ it.

He’s halfway through the third chapter ( _Lady Mei Hua raised her sword as the wind whipped through her raven locks, his equal in pride but his better in skill -_ ) when Tenzin shoves his last scroll into its slot in the wall and drops to a knee next to Kya, talking to her in hushed tones. He raises his eyes over the top of the book and then quietly folds the page corner: everything about them says surrender.

After a minute or two of whispered conference, both Tenzin and Kya stand up. Mako doesn’t even steel himself for the bad news; he knows they didn’t find anything.

“Mako, we still haven’t found anything that could shed any light on… your injury,” Tenzin says, “but we will keep looking. There’s an astonishing collection of books on spirit matters in the North Pole, they were all Unalaq’s, and I’m certain - ”

“We have to look in Wan Shi Tong’s library.”

Jinora’s voice cuts through Tenzin’s with a musical confidence. She squeezes between her father and her aunt, looking up at them with her round brown eyes.

“Unalaq didn’t care about people. Only spirits. He won’t have anything that could help,” she says, “but I know Wan Shi Tong might. I just know it. He has everything in his library.”

Kya and Tenzin exchange glances over her head.

“Let’s leave that as a last resort, honey,” Kya says, inclining towards Jinora. “But for now, I think the North Pole is our safest bet. Mako?”

There’s no way they’re going to leave him here to sit around and wait. Mako crosses his arms and sets his jaw.

“I’m coming too,” he says. Tenzin waves a hand in assent.

“I’ll go make the preparations,” he says. Both he and Kya leave the library, taking up their secretive conversation again, and Jinora starts sorting the abandoned book stacks on the carpet. Mako’s eyes are fuzzy with sleepiness. He rubs the feeling away and drinks more tea, trying to wash the dry taste from his mouth, stay awake; if he waits long enough, he’ll have a deep, formless sleep. He would take anything over the room with the door. Even the old dreams. The vision of the closing door, the light swallowed by the silence, wraps itself around his throat and squeezes - what if they don’t find anything? What if it never lets him go -

Jinora passes by his chair with an armful of books and Mako throws his arm out, catching her by the sleeve and stopping her short; it feels like he just saved himself from falling. She fixes him with a strange look and he releases her. But there’s something he wants, more than any blind reassurances or hollow promises to help, and even though he hasn’t thought about it in years Mako needs it now.

Ten minutes later, Jinora comes back, her eyes alight with pride, and presses a weathered green children’s book into his hands. And that night, for the first time in a week, Mako sleeps well. The stories are just how he remembered…

… but they don’t find anything in the North Pole, either.

***

Korra remembers the leader of the White Lotus arguing with her firebending master behind a closed door late one night in the compound. She stood at the door with her fist raised, ready to knock, wanting to ask when Katara was due back from Republic City, and listening instead to Aklaq dismantling her progress piece by piece.

_Do we really want to start this girl on firebending forms that advanced? Can she handle that kind of power? I’m not saying she shouldn’t be taught, but fire is dangerous if poorly controlled, and with her reckless nature -_

Korra didn’t listen to the rest. She left the longhouse, crossed the moonlit snows of the compound, and slept in Naga’s stable, cuddled up with her loyal polar bear dog. She was twelve and only just learning to understand things like these, the way adults betray the faith of children and how some rewards are lesser than the hard work that earns them: bending for the scant praise of the White Lotus was starting to pale in comparison to bending for the pleasure of bending alone. Korra disentangled her wounded pride from her anger as Naga licked her face clean, and realized it wasn’t Aklaq’s condescension that stung the most. It was his doubt.

The people of the Northern Water Tribe carry their doubts like disease, a contagious thing that sickens others; and Korra can sense it on them as she helps Tonraq and Eska and Desna with the business of ruling. “Help” - not really, she thinks. She can’t help anyone if they don’t trust her with her own power, and it feels like none of them do.

“Are you sure you should’ve left the portals open?” asks a Water Tribe politician at a council meeting, for the fiftieth time, and Korra explains herself again, the words stale and dry in her mouth: “Yes. I believe Avatar Wan was wrong to close them. We should be learning how to live in harmony with the spirits…”

She’s starting to hate it.

So when a telegram arrives one morning from Tenzin, telling her to expect him, Korra’s heart loses some of its weight. Tenzin can help her feel better about this. And the rest of the message - Kya and Jinora are coming to look at Unalaq’s books, Mako has some sort of mysterious spirit injury - is a welcome distraction from the boring political junk -

“Wait, hold on a second,” Korra says, reading the telegram again. A growing black bruise, only visible to the spiritually attuned… She chews her bottom lip and spreads the telegram flat on the dining table, rereading it again. He’s also coming North.

“When are they all coming?” Tonraq says from across the table, pouring another cup of yak butter tea. As the Avatar and Chief of the Southern Water Tribe, they have their own luxurious apartments in the palace, and for once in her life Korra likes the seclusion.

“The telegram is dated yesterday, so they’ll be here today,” Korra says, shoving the paper towards him.

Tonraq eyes it over the rim of his cup. “Mako’s hurt with some spirit thing?”

“That’s what the telegram says. Now I have to see him,” she mutters, folding her arms on the table, and next to her Senna cups a hand over Korra’s shoulder.

“But you ended things well with him, didn’t you? You told me - ”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it,” Korra says, maybe a bit louder than she meant. Tonraq and Senna give each other amused looks, smirking over some secret joke, and somehow it annoys her more than she can stand.

“I’m done with breakfast. See you later,” she says, rising from the table in one swift movement. And before they can say anything else, Korra swivels on her heel and marches out.

Korra doesn’t like the way Mako slunk away when they returned to Republic City two weeks ago, without a word or a backwards glance, even if she understands it. But even during the voyage from the South Pole she’d felt Mako withdrawing - retreating, really, every one of their short, studiously calm conversations another step back from whatever battle he was fighting, and she’d really hoped…

The palace parade grounds have a view of the Old City, the part of the capital circled by cliffs and crossed by gleaming blue canals. On the other side of the harbor wall, the ocean curves south towards the horizon, dotted by icebergs. Korra runs through airbending drills for the better part of the morning, losing her thoughts in the rhythm and the ache.

And then, just around lunch, an air bison drops out of the sky and comes to a graceful landing on the parade grounds. Jinora jumps from the saddle with an airy pirouette, followed shortly by Mako’s athletic leap; and Korra stops her routine, her heart pounding in her chest for reasons more than just the exertion of bending forms.

She doesn’t want to talk about it - but she does lie awake at night, balancing on the fine line between regret and resolve, missing the steadying touch of his hands and his voice but not the way his face looked that day in the police station, dirty with exhausted desperation. She has no idea what they’ll say to each other.

He straightens up, dusts off his sleeve, and looks at Korra, his eternally bright gaze catching hers; her breast fills with a swell of pure, formless emotion and maybe they should just start with ‘hello.’

Jinora runs forward and catches her around the waist, knocking Korra a step back.

“Korra! I’ve always wanted to see the North Pole. Can you take me to see Tui and La?”

“Yeah, of course, kiddo. We can go see Tui and La whenever you want, but first we need to focus on what’s going on with that guy so he can go home,” Korra says, smiling broadly at Jinora and pointing to Mako.

“Can’t wait,” Mako says, with a tone colder than the polar ocean. Korra’s smile freezes on her face. Just how far back in did he go?

"Korra," Tenzin says, blithely stepping between them, "I’m so happy to see you. Would you mind showing us to the library? I’m eager to get my hands on those books."

"No one better," Korra says, only half paying attention to Tenzin. Behind him Kya says something in an undertone to Mako, whose expression darkens. "Okay. Come with me, the library’s this way."

By the time they reach the library, Korra’s made up her mind; she shows them to the books on spirits, makes an excuse, and leaves. She’s not going to stick around, not with Mako like _that_.

***

When Jinora shakes her awake in the middle of the night, small hand gripping Korra’s shoulder and insisting she go talk to Mako now, _right now_ , Korra’s first reaction is to flump right back into bed. She doesn’t want to talk to him. _He_ doesn’t want to talk to _her_. She pulls the covers up and rolls over, turning her back to Jinora, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat.

“Korra, come on,” Jinora whispers, dragging the covers away, and Korra grumbles under her breath, curling up as the cold air slaps onto her bare skin. “You have to help him.”

Korra buries her head under her pillow, blindly waving Jinora off.

“I’ll help him in the morning. Go away,” she mutters. Jinora grabs her hand and tugs with all her strength, drawing a low annoyed moan from Korra.

“Unalaq’s books didn’t help. I was right, he has to go into the Spirit World,” Jinora says. “Nothing in this world is gonna help him.”

“ _What?_ ”

Korra throws the pillow aside and sits up, grabbing Jinora by the upper arms and leaning in. Nothing in Jinora’s expression suggests this is some kind of night terror or sleepwalking; her eyes are wide with plaintive urgency.

“Jinora, what exactly is going on with him?” she says, her pulse quickening. Nothing in this world - ? A cold sweat breaks over her as her mind starts to race, darting from thought to thought: he came with her into the Spirit World during Harmonic Convergence - is it her fault? Is this because she left the portals open? Will it happen again, she wonders, and to more people…

“Ask him,” Jinora says.

Korra quickly gets dressed and follows Jinora out of her rooms, down the dark, vaulted hallway to the other guest suite. Mako is leaning against the wall just outside the doors, also fully dressed. When they walk up his gaze travels to Korra and then hastily drops away, like he didn’t mean to be caught looking. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

“I told you she’d come,” Jinora says to him, only just loud enough for Korra to hear, and that _also_ hurts.

Korra gives herself a second to compose herself, her body relaxed and open; if she loses her temper, he’ll spook.

“What’s going on, Mako?”

In response Mako undoes his sash, opens his coat, and lifts up the corner of his shirt to reveal his midriff, and even in the deep half-lit gloom Korra can see it: a huge black bruise, slightly disfigured, starting from one hip and just a few inches short of the other. Just looking at the thing fills her with an odd, creeping dread, all the warmth deadening in her limbs… she grimaces.

“So you can see it?” Mako says, and Korra nods. Both Mako and Jinora sigh with relief.

“Tenzin and Kya don’t know what to do. Jinora thinks I should go into the Spirit World and look there,” he says, “and I am. I’m not going to sit around and wait for this thing to - to get worse.”

He narrows his eyes as he says it, daring her to challenge him. Korra crosses her arms and stares back, just as stubborn, feeling herself hurtling towards a high edge of emotion. She’s still angry at him, this stupid boy she loves and all the stupid things he does and all the stupid ways he makes her feel. His idea is stupid and thoughtless. But he’s only like that when he loses control, in the face of things way greater than his willpower.

“Then I’m going with you,” she says.

“What? _No_.”

“You want Jinora to go with you instead? You don’t know anything about the Spirit World, Mako! You need my help, whether you like it or not,” she says, and Mako closes his eyes, a long sigh rolling up through his chest and falling out, his hand absently gripping his side. It must hurt.

Finally he opens them again.

“Fine.”

***

And that’s how they find themselves standing in front of the Northern portal, feeling the sharp edges of the freezing night air, watching the portal shine like a star emerging from the earth. The only thing left to do is go in.

"Ready?" Korra says, looking again at Mako; and he trains his eyes forward. His fingertips are red with cold, stiff in his black gloves. Korra has the sudden desire to clasp his hands in hers and bring them to her mouth, breathe warmth into them, reassure him that everything is going to be alright - tell him to trust her -

“The boy goes back to the farm,” he says abruptly, in a murmured undertone, and before she can ask Mako looks back at her. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

They stand there for a moment, the portal flooding them with its warm, watery light, and then they go.


End file.
